Summer Kisses (253 page)

“Not unless you want there to be, darlin’.” He flipped her visor into place. That, combined with the growl of the engine, blocked her ears and drowned out his laughter.

And they were off. 

Fear for life and limb replaced Annabel’s lesser worries as Max revved the motor into a ferocious growl, shifted into gear, and sent them lunging forward with reckless speed. Between the noise and the motion, her poor head nearly exploded. The body rocking vibration of the black beast shook her insides like tapioca pudding.

She turned and looked with longing at her safe and solid house, as well as her beautiful, lively daughter waving them on their way. Annabel wanted to wave back, one final farewell, but her hands refused to unclench from their death grip on Max’s jacket.

When they turned a corner and the house disappeared from sight, she closed her eyes and buried her forehead against the wall of black leather in front of her. The relentless rumble of the engine filled her ears and echoed around inside her helmet, accompanied by a tremor that rattled her brain and pounded against her eardrums.

During what seemed like an eternity, she took a quick inventory of her life and her unfulfilled goals. She really should have tried to patch things up with her sister. She’d never have the chance to study with cinematographer Lance Foreman as she’d always wanted to do. And the dream of living and working in New York or LA would remain just that—a dream, not a reality, or even a possibility. Suddenly, it seemed like an unendurable loss that she’d never
seen
Paris, France. Or Versailles, France. Or even Versailles, Indiana, for that matter.

And wouldn’t it be a travesty to win the Community First award posthumously?

At the very first stop, she should call Carly and tell her she loved her...and remind her where to find the key to the safety deposit box.

Just as Annabel decided they must be near Columbus by now, the bike decelerated and the vibration decreased. She ventured a peek to see if she recognized her surroundings.

And she did.

They idled at a traffic light not a mile from her house.

“Stop.” She tapped Max on the shoulder, and he turned his head to look at her. “Stop,” she shouted, motioning for him to pull into a filling station on the corner.

With a twist of his wrist and an energetic vroom, he obeyed. While they rolled to a stop, she put her feet down, scuffing the toes of Carly’s boots and almost ripping her feet from her ankles. She slammed into him with an
ooph
! and scrambled to regain some distance between her chest and his back. Okay, she admitted grudgingly, so sometimes he was right.

He cut off the motor. “What’s wrong?” His voice sounded distant and sinister behind his dark face mask. Like Darth Vader without the cape.

Her hands shook as she lifted her Plexiglas face covering. Breathing deeply, she savored a moment of peace and quiet and immobility. “How fast were we going?”

“Only about seventy,” he drawled. “I can’t really crank it up until we’re on the highway.”

“Seventy!” Annabel jumped off the bike onto solid ground. “That’s reckless and dangerous! Give me my purse and I’ll walk home from here.”

He lifted his shield and she could see his grin. “You’re so easy to rile, Morgan. I stayed within the speed limit the whole time, which on this street is thirty. Now, get back on, or we’ll be late.”

“Oh, sor-ry.” Hiding her deep-down feeling of foolishness behind sarcasm, she accepted his hand and climbed back on. “I didn’t realize the Hells Angels were such rigorous schedule-keepers.”

He shrugged. “You know how it is. Villages to pillage, towns to plunder.” At least, this time she recognized his lame attempt at humor. He pulled her arms around him, then joined her hands together in front of him. Holding them in place, he turned to look at her. “Try to keep an open mind,” he suggested. “You don’t know half as much as you think you do.”

Wasn’t that the truth?
She’d been raised to live a respectable, responsible life of suffocating decorum. Her job as a documentary editor suited her perfectly, isolating her in safety while she observed and edited the reckless activities of others. From a safe distance, she could decide what footage could be kept and what could be cut.

She’d hardly experienced anything firsthand, and she knew without asking that firsthand was the way Max experienced everything. Determined to do this for herself, for her stepdaughter, and to show Max a more interesting side of her, she’d try living life his way for just one day. She nodded for him to take off. Following his advice, she kept her eyes wide open and her head up.

The scenery flew by in a blur. Colors and shapes zipped past in a flowing kaleidoscope. Gradually, her body and her vision adjusted to the unaccustomed motion and velocity. The sensation of freedom and daring, of racing the world and winning, reminded her of the champagne from the night before, fizzy and fun and going straight to her head.

At least she enjoyed it until they passed from the structured residential streets onto the terrifying rush of I-275. SUVs and minivans the size of tanks sped past them and brushed close beside them. Annabel’s vulnerability increased, and she cowered behind Max—the only stable object in an unsteady universe.

Pressing her chest against the strong column of his back, she clasped her arms in a bear hug around his middle and wedged his hips between the V of her thighs. Somehow the idea of fusing herself to his comforting bulk provided her with a feeling of safety.

An eighteen-wheeler barreled alongside and spewed exhaust and gravel in their direction while sucking the air around them like a giant vacuum cleaner. Too bad her clothing choices hadn’t included something more practical for motorcycle riding than faded denim—like a suit of armor.

Just before she lost all control and succumbed to screaming hysterics, Max took the Ellis Road exit toward Riverbend Music Center and the Ohio River. Off the highway, the air blasting past her became fresher, cleaner, and lighter. After a couple more turns off of smooth pavement onto bumpy byroads, lush green countryside enveloped them in a simpler world. One filled with nothing more than dappled sunlight, a powerful engine, and an incredibly sexy man creating a decided hum of awareness between her thighs.

Raising her head, Annabel relished the unforeseen pleasure of traveling unencumbered through time and space. Why had she resisted? She’d been wrong, and she would admit it when they stopped. If they ever stopped. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to. At least not while she had this little sensual buzz building. Feel the noise, indeed.

Before the buzz took her where she wanted to go, the Harley began to slow. She leaned into another turn, and the gravel road ratcheted her sexual pleasure up a notch. But looking up ahead, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Through her near orgasmic gaze, she blinked and looked again.

Under a banner that read “Good Riders - Ride a Bike, Feed a Tyke,” Harleys, Harleys, and more Harleys filled the parking lot of The Hog Heaven Bar and Grill. Each machine carried a biker more disreputable looking than the next. She wondered at the number of cows killed to produce so much black leather. When Max said they were meeting his bike club, she’d pictured a gang of ten or twenty, not a legion.

As they reached the fringe of the group, men gestured and called out greetings to Max. As he had predicted Annabel couldn’t hear a thing, but he nodded and waved. Slowing the bike to a crawl, he threaded it through the gathering.

At the bar’s rambling porch, he pulled into an empty space. A tall, wiry-looking guy in chaps, plaid shirt and leather vest leaned against a beam. Despite world-weary eyes and lines on his face that told of a life lived hard, he carried an undeniable aura of authority. A blue bandana covered most of his red hair peppered with gray. In the goatee he stroked, the gray strands outnumbered the red. He waited for Max to shut off his bike. Annabel wanted to whimper when the engine finally quit pulsating.

“Glad you could make it,” Goatee Man said to Max.

Or so Annabel guessed. With the residual ringing in her ears, she had to rely on lip-reading more than hearing.

The man handed an envelope to Max. He stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans, millimeters away from grazing Annabel’s most personal place with those long-ranging fingers. The thought should be horrifying, instead of making her dizzy with longing.

She couldn’t make out Max’s response to Goatee Man’s conversation, but from the other guy’s grin and nod in her direction, that was just as well. If she looked as ready to come as she felt, she didn’t want to know.

Max swiveled at the waist to face her. His mouth moved, but the words jumbled together.

Annabel took off her helmet and cupped her ear. “What?”

“We’ll only be here a few minutes.” He mouthed each word distinctly and pointed to his watch. “You need to take care of anything?”

Him
. She wanted to take care of him. Or have him take care of her. Insane, but it was all she could do to keep from grabbing him. She needed to get a grip before she attacked the man and stripped him naked. But maybe he wouldn’t mind. The idea of a naked Max should scare the bejesus out of her. But instead, she found the idea... intriguing as all get out. Something she’d have to think about at greater length. Sometime when he wasn’t standing right in front of her in all his audacious glory.

He’d told her there wouldn’t be drugs or nudity unless she wanted there to be, and maybe, just maybe, she did. Not drugs, of course, but nudity sounded awfully appealing.

Annabel shook her head. No, it didn’t. Not really. All of this jittery sensation was simply a reaction to the crotch rocket she’d been riding, the sexy body of the man she’d had her thighs wrapped around, and years of sleeping alone. She didn’t even like Max, and all that sexy allure he exuded was definitely off-limits. But that didn’t prevent him from looking damned good to a libido that was giddy from a long overdue dose of shake, rattle, and roll.

Annabel eyed the seedy-looking dive and the crowd of mostly men. No one she eyeballed looked half as good—or even as reputable—as Max. Better to stick with the devil she knew.

Her legs trembled so much, she wasn’t sure she could stand. Her jaws along with every other molecule of her body still quivered from the ride, and she didn’t trust herself to speak. She shook her head at Max and signaled her intention to stay put.

After more mumbled conversation, Goatee Man climbed aboard an enormous bike. Then the army of road warriors thundered their Harleys into a ground-trembling roar, equaling the decibel level of a NASA liftoff.

Lines and rows formed like magic from the random scattering of riders. Two bikers pulled into the road, blocking the approaching traffic as the platoon of motorcycles fell in behind Max and the man with the goatee, leading them on a journey Annabel knew not where.

Wherever they were going, they were going full force, and they weren’t keeping a low profile. And she hoped it took them a long time to get there.

From the way Annabel molded herself to his back like hot wax, Max expected more questions or complaints when he pulled into the next stop. Instead, she swung her leg over the bike like a veteran rider, even though her limbs appeared as wobbly as Gumby’s. Instead of complaining, she merely rested her rump against the seat and lifted off her brain bucket emitting a low, vibrating hum.

Somewhere along the way, she’d lost the hard edges that usually kept her face pulled taut. She looked softer and sweeter and wore a dreamy, self-satisfied smile he’d never seen on her lips before. If he knew anything about women, he’d think she…

Well, son-of-a-bitch! She’d gotten revved up enough to experience her own personal moment of glory! And he hadn’t even gotten to participate with so much as a finger in the process. She’d felt the noise, all right. If he’d known she was that ripe and ready, he’d have played this trip differently from the start.

“You need to freshen up?” he asked, halfway hard just thinking of her climaxing while pressing against his back.

He fought an urge to touch the new and pliable Annabel. Hell, he fought the urge to kiss her, touch her, imprint himself all over her while she swam in the sensual pool of afterglow. When she remembered coming apart in satisfaction, he wanted her to connect him to those happy memories. He’d made them possible, after all, even if he hadn’t been personally involved.

That sure wouldn’t be the case next time.

She pounded the heel of her hand against her ear. He recognized the sure-sign for temporary Harley deafness. Harleys weren’t known for being smooth, sleek, or dependable, but they over-compensated for all that by being loud, fast, and sexy. No point in trying to talk to her now. Her ears would ring for a while.

Putting his hand on her wrist, he stroked his thumb across her pulse. When her lips turned up in a small smile of awareness, he pointed her toward the bar and mimed eating and drinking.

Annabel looked askance at the dilapidated exterior of a honky-tonk the club frequented called The Hoghouse. Clearly, it didn’t meet her prissy-girl standards, even though her prissy-girl standards had tumbled a notch or two in the last half hour.

With a hand on her shoulder, he motioned for her to wait while he went inside to do the glad-handing bit he’d missed out on earlier. There, the other Hog-lovers bought smokes or Cokes and waited in line to get the next card for their poker hand. Each rider hoped to have the winning combination at the end of the run. But Max’s thoughts kept returning to Annabel getting herself off on his bike.

“Thanks again for coming today,” Dick Ubecki, the club president, said to him. “We always get a good turnout when the fellas know you’re coming along, and this one’s for a good cause.”

“Happy to help out, Judge,” Max said. “How many riders do we have?”

“A couple hundred.”

Max nodded. That many entry fees would make a hefty donation to the Feed-a-Child Foundation. “It’s a great day for a ride.”

“Any day’s a great day for a ride.” Bruce Townsend joined them with a root beer in hand. “Especially if you’re a Good Rider.”